Don’t panic, but there’s roughly a one in 30 chance you have had sex with your cousin – or that you will do so in the future.
The wildly disturbing statistic comes from research by AncestryDNA, which suggests that one in 300 strangers in Britain is, in fact, your cousin.
Taking into account that most of us will have roughly 10 sexual partners in our lives (it’s 11.7 for men), across Britain’s population there’s roughly a one in 30 chance that you have bumped uglies with your cousin.
The reason is how interwoven family histories in Britain actually are – meaning that people who are our ‘cousins’, genetically speaking, are all around us.
And sometimes, they may have been a little TOO close.
“It’s incredible to think that many of us will be in daily contact with unknown relatives – with no idea that we share much more than the same sporting team or commute to work,” said Brad Argent, commercial director of AncestryDNA.
Everybody’s curious when it comes to discovering unknown factoids about their family tree, but new research from the UK makes clear just how diversely spread our DNA really is.
A new demographic analysis by genealogy service AncestryDNA provides some truly fascinating statistics that highlight just how interwoven the family histories of British people can be. Turns out, for the average Brit, there’s a one-in-300 chance that a complete stranger is in fact their cousin.
